> Hiring in our industry is already feeling the brunt of AI
AI isn't what is driving us to slow hiring down in the US. There are other reasons I have brought up multiple times on HN.
> I’m too old to learn XYZ skill if I get laid off
Sadly, you will have to.
My dad is in his 60s and has been programming and soldering since ZX Spectrums and apple ][s roamed the earth, yet he still keeps abreast on the latest CNCF projects, prompt engineering, A2A, eBPF, and other modern stacks.
Meanwhile I'm seeing people half his age flaming out and kvetching that spending some time further studying A2A, MCP, and other design patterns is insurmountable.
Software Engineering is an ENGINEERING discipline. If you do not keep abreast on the changes happening in our industry, you will fall behind.
And in fact, having years of experience is a net benefit because newer innovations themselves build on top of older fundamentals.
For example, understanding Linux internals helps debug GPUs that communicate via Infiniband that are being used to train models that are being orchestrated via K8s and are operating on segmented networks.
Our PortCos and I are not hiring you to be a code monkey writing pretty looking code. If we want a code monkey we can offshore. We are paying you $200k-300k base salaries in order to architect, translate, and negotiate business requirements into technical requirements.
Yes this will require EQ on top of technical depth. That is what engineering is. The whole point of engineering is to build sh#t that works well enough. It doesn't have to be pretty, it will often be MacGyvered, and it will have glaring issues that are tomorrow's problem - but it is solving a problem.
The name of the game for me is building “sh#t that works well” and I like it, and that means constant learning no doubt. I’ve done crazy sh!t like implementing Webservers with bash, accessed accessed by tunneling over uart, to configure laser driven HUD on a pair of glasses. All this was new to me but I did it and it works well within the constraints we were given.
Now AI is making us more efficient (with questionable quality) that means we need less people to get a job done, less people hired per project. I have personally experienced this, to a degree. Now if I get layedoff and I don’t meet the cut because there is more competition someone better or more desperate that me, I’m out of luck.
I can restart my career as an electrician, I studied a lot of electronics both professionally and personally, but I will be starting as an apprentice, that’s not putting food on my table.
> We are paying you $200k-300k base salaries
That’s nice, I earn far less than half that as a web dev in Norway.
> That’s nice, I earn less than half that as a web dev in Norway
Well, that's a different conversation then, and you raise a fair point.
I think it is fair for most Europeans to complain because your business community does not respect software and other engineering and IP driven disciplines.
The fact that Bangalore [0] tech salaries have caught up to Italian [1] tech salaries highlights that fact. But then again, you are competing against Czech [2], Polish [3], and Romanian [4] developers who are also members of the EFTA and whose governments provide massive subsidizes for tech companies to operate there.
On the other hand, if I see American SWEs complain I will get livid.
> I’ve done crazy sh!t like implementing Webservers with bash, accessed accessed by tunneling over uart, to configure laser driven HUD on a pair of glasses. All this was new to me but I did it and it works well within the constraints we were given.
That is great stuff from a technical perspective, but what I mean is making sure any development work you do is aligned with your employer, or shifting employers to one who is better aligned with SWEs and Engineering, such as my buddies from college who specialized in HPC and ended up doing simulation work in Equinor style ONG majors.
Alternatively, you may have no choice but to immigrate to Stockholm or London because there is some amount of network effect for software in both metros.
> Now if I get layedoff and I don’t meet the cut because there is more competition someone better or more desperate that me, I’m out of luck
Assuming you live in a city (an actual city) like Oslo and keep up-to-date technically you should be fine.
Software Engineering is an ENGINEERING discipline. If you do not keep abreast on the changes happening in our industry, you will fall behind.
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Lately it's more like swallowing big swathes of BS. Software and engineering are two very far away disciplines. This has nothing to do with engineering. You have to use cumbersome, non-human-centric things just to get a job interview. They don't look at you as a programmer. They look at you as an X or Y framework expert. So, you are not an engineer at all. You are more and more becoming a trained monkey who has to appease the feebleminded and work with mind-bogglingly idiotic and overcomplicated things.
AI isn't what is driving us to slow hiring down in the US. There are other reasons I have brought up multiple times on HN.
> I’m too old to learn XYZ skill if I get laid off
Sadly, you will have to.
My dad is in his 60s and has been programming and soldering since ZX Spectrums and apple ][s roamed the earth, yet he still keeps abreast on the latest CNCF projects, prompt engineering, A2A, eBPF, and other modern stacks.
Meanwhile I'm seeing people half his age flaming out and kvetching that spending some time further studying A2A, MCP, and other design patterns is insurmountable.
Software Engineering is an ENGINEERING discipline. If you do not keep abreast on the changes happening in our industry, you will fall behind.
And in fact, having years of experience is a net benefit because newer innovations themselves build on top of older fundamentals.
For example, understanding Linux internals helps debug GPUs that communicate via Infiniband that are being used to train models that are being orchestrated via K8s and are operating on segmented networks.
Our PortCos and I are not hiring you to be a code monkey writing pretty looking code. If we want a code monkey we can offshore. We are paying you $200k-300k base salaries in order to architect, translate, and negotiate business requirements into technical requirements.
Yes this will require EQ on top of technical depth. That is what engineering is. The whole point of engineering is to build sh#t that works well enough. It doesn't have to be pretty, it will often be MacGyvered, and it will have glaring issues that are tomorrow's problem - but it is solving a problem.